Ringing Up Baby

October 20, 2002|By Susan Campbell Lifestyle Correspondent

When Betsy Howie discovered she was pregnant, she began keeping a running tally of her expenses. The Falls Village, Conn., author and actress wanted to see how much she spent during pregnancy (start-up costs), childbirth (the launching of the first fiscal quarter) and child-rearing for a year (postpartum recession, speculating futures, all of it).

Entries were recorded painstakingly by item, category and amount. (Weight Watchers was eventually labeled a baby expense, but its category switched from "shrinkage" to "downsizing" to "self-flagellation" to "competitive edge" over time.) Occasionally, Howie's now 18-month-old daughter, Callie, would get comped things like holiday clothes or the money left in Howie's pocket at the end of each month, money she had once spent on movies and dinners out.

But everything else -- diapers, maternity clothes, bibs and outlet covers -- was to be on Callie's dime.

The result is Callie's Tally: An Accounting of Baby's First Year (Or: What My Daughter Owes Me) (Penguin Putnam, $22.95), a wicked and often wise rumination on motherhood.

By the time Callie reaches her first birthday, her tally is more than $8,000. Writes Howie: "It's time for all of us to wake up. We've already raised three generations, at least, who are in serious personal entitlement overdrive. I want Callie to be better than that. I want her to know how to take care of herself. I want her to know how much life costs and what things are worth. I want her to know what she's worth. I would also like to get some money back."

We caught Howie, a 40-year-old single parent, at home, during one of Callie's rare naps:

Q. When did you decide to keep a tally?

A. I was five months pregnant, and I went into a store, bought four things, and spent $614. Suddenly, Callie had stuff. Something about having stuff makes you exist. I often write little essays, and very seldom do they go anywhere, but people laughed when I read this one, and it evolved from there. The next time I bought something, I made another entry. It was two weeks before she was born that the book actually sold, so up until then I was doing it for my own entertainment. I think it was a way for me to wrap my brain around it.

Q. When will you show the book to Callie?

A. She already knows it's hers. I've shown it to her, shown her it says "Callie" -- not that I want to imply that she's reading, although she is a genius. She walks around with it and flips through it as if she's reviewing it.

Q. Say Callie is 12 or 13, and she reads the book. Then what?

A. If she reads it at 13, she might realize her mother had a sense of humor and isn't a total dope. The sort of long view is that I hope she realizes it's the ultimate loving tribute baby book.

Q. You wrote that you didn't want Callie to grow up with an overblown sense of entitlement. Was that part of your motivation for writing it?

A. I suppose all humor has a serious backbone. I didn't sit down to write the book about de-entitling our children, or whatever the catch phrase would be. But there's something there, isn't there? It's like in place of time, we're just shoving stuff down their throat and sending them to 7 million lessons.

Q. But you sounded surprised at how much you shopped.

A. It's sick. I am not a natural-born shopper. The first year, you're so busy -- and you're not doing anything. Shopping is an activity where you can take the child and see other adults, and it becomes: "What are we going to do today? It's raining. We'll shop." It's bad. I would keep dropping the credit card. The nice thing is the outfits don't cost that much, but they only wear them 3 minutes.

Q. At one point, you can't decide if Callie should pay for something, or if you should. "There are no clear-cut lines anywhere," you wrote.

A. It actually has gotten fuzzier. Is it me; is it her?

Q. And Weight Watchers was a fuzzy area?

A. I have been battling my weight, and I just found out I have an underactive thyroid. I've been taking these pounds off with a chisel. I gained a lot of weight when I was pregnant, and I thought, `Oh, man, I'm right back to seventh grade. Pregnancy truly has made me young again.' I'm going to a weigh-in tonight. I've got 8 more pounds. When you're pregnant, you literally have no say over your body, which is doing all this bizarre stuff. All you can do is sort of step back and watch it.

Q. Your mother moved to live near you. Has she settled in?

A. She's a piece of work. You want to talk to her? She's sitting at the top of the stairs finishing the book. She hasn't finished the book. Let me put her on.

A. [Callie's grandmother, whom Callie calls "Bob," takes the phone.] I've been keeping up with it all through the process, but I've never read the thing in total. I'm down to the last few pages. I think it's a great read. I think people are going to enjoy it.

A. [Back to Howie]: When I hang up, I'll get the pursed lips, but I'm fine with that. Her moving to be near me was huge. It would be a totally different story if she hadn't done that. It was like the ultimate tally, the mother-to-daughter, mother-to-daughter line. Who owes who for what?

As my editor actually said, it's the ultimate story of accountability between mother and daughter.